Letter to the Editor: Slighting the CFR

A USA Today analysis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East on April 4, cited the Council on Foreign Relations calling it simply "an association of former diplomats and other experts...."

I would like to correct that. This disingenuous description of the CFR grossly minimizes its dominant role in U.S. foreign relations. More accurate was the Washington Post portrayal as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling class in the United States."

The Post's Richard Harwood said that "They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the U.S.; they help make it."

This is no right-wing chimera either. Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a CFR member, termed it a "front organization" for the "heart of the American Establishment." Its leaders, wrote Richard Rovere, comprise "a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation."

Another longtime member and a critic of it was the late Admiral Chester Ward, judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy. Ward said the organizations goal is "submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government."

Thus, consider the urging of Kenneth Pollack, deputy director of National Security Studies at the CFR.

"The United States should invade Iraq, eliminate the present regime, and pave the way for a successor prepared to abide by its international commitments...." Such plans, unsurprisingly, are under active consideration.

Vice President Dick Cheney drew a round of laughter during a recent Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) meeting. He quipped that, during his tenure in Congress, he didn't dare let his constituents back home in Wyoming know about his CFR membership.

Former CFR and Trilateral Commission Chairman David Rockefeller then took the podium and thanked Cheney for so faithfully serving insider interests. He was particularly pleased that [Cheney] "gave such a strong endorsement for the free-trade agreement for all the Americas..."